When I first saw the book I was so glad, because it was so much thicker than the usual Terry Pratchett's books.Vetinari is awesome at all times, but him being drunk was just amazing.In the end it really seemed typical that the football player and the model ended up together. Mr Nutt was an interesting character and he's knowledge abut spoons was incredible. (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_evczPOeIO0k/T ... micals.JPG thats the full cover)When they first talked about football, I thought that Rincewind would be a perfect player; he can run.

I read Unseen Academicals quite recently for the first time and it struck me that Sir Terry must have seen a BBC series called Sleepers which was shown in the early 1990s because there are several parallels in it to the book. For example, in Sleepers there is a character who constantly introduces himself as Checkhov (no relation). If you want to hunt for it the leads are Nigel Havers and Warren Clarke.

It was repeated a couple of times and is available in DVD second hand only and it's now become quite expensive.

There are other things - another character is constantly looking at the English football match of 1966 in which there is a controversial goal, the two leading characters have to go on the run because the KGB is after them and so on. There is also a soft toy in the story who plays a much bigger part than Glenda's teddy bear but he's there.

Welcome to the site! I don't recall ever seeing that show. I think the "no relation" thing may go back a lot further than that. Here's an example. But who knows? Terry frequently comes up with references that even he doesn't know the origin of.

“Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.” – Blaise Pascal